


Kissing and Drinking

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [30]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-07-15 01:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7200638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the  <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/">comment_fic</a> prompt "Daniel Jackson/Cameron Mitchell; This southern man don't need him anyhow". When Cam was in the hospital during the worst of his recovery, when his days were nothing but an endless cycle of pain and restless sleep, he developed the teeniest, tiniest crush on Daniel Jackson. Also gratuitous misuse of the names of sodas from the best real life soda shack ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kissing and Drinking

When Cam was in the hospital during the worst of his recovery, when his days were nothing but an endless cycle of pain and restless sleep, he developed the teeniest, tiniest crush on Daniel Jackson. It was because Daniel had a nice voice. Cam didn't know whether it was charity or sympathy or gratitude or even boredom, but Daniel stopped by the hospital often. If Cam was awake, Daniel would catch his gaze, hold it, say hello, ask how he was doing, sit in patient silence without expecting an answer. If Cam was asleep, his visits were brief, and he'd always ask the nurses not to bother Cam with the news that he'd been by, but the nurses would tell him anyway, because they thought it was so nice that Daniel came to see him so often. (The nurses thought Daniel was his brother. It was an easy mistake to make, both of them with brown hair and blue eyes.

If Cam was awake but too tired to open his eyes, Daniel would sit by his bed and read to him. Sam always made fun of Cam for reading all of SG-1's AARs. What she didn't know was that Daniel had started reading them to him first.

"You deserve to know what you almost died for," Daniel said, leaning in so he could speak softly, so only Cam could hear. "The good and the bad."

Cam had only managed a soft hum of acknowledgement, and even that made his throat ache (which wasn't new; everything ached).

Most reports Daniel read with steady, clinical dispassion, but on some of the less perilous missions, he'd inject a bit of humor into things, do impressions of Teal'c and O'Neill and even Sam.

Daniel always seemed to know right when Cam fell asleep, because the next time he came by, he'd pick up at the spot that was precisely the last thing Cam remembered hearing before he fell asleep.

And then Cam got better, and the better he got, the less he saw of Daniel. He was pretty sure Daniel was still keeping tabs on him, because once a week an envelope would show up, for his eyes only, delivered by a young, pretty nurse who'd waggle her eyebrows and deliver the triple-sealed package to Cam and tell him _Happy reading_.

Cam stopped seeing Daniel altogether when he reached physical therapy. All he had the energy for was OPT and reading a little before bed each night, and the weekly visits from his mother and father he treasured so much. He hated the look his father would get whenever Cam winced or demonstrated even the slightest amount of physical pain. Frank Mitchell had sacrificed his legs for the Air Force and his country; he was disappointed that Cam had risked the same, risked his whole body.

Cam wished he could tell his father he hadn't risked it all for nothing.

Cam felt like a liar when he told his father that he'd been promoted early and agreed to take a position that would involve a lot of travel but probably wouldn't involve flying ever again. Mom and Pop looked so relieved, thinking he was out of danger, that all the hard work he'd done in rehab would never risk setback again, that with the Medal of Honor on his chest he'd be safe and sound behind a desk under a mountain till he finished his time in grade and retired as a full-bird colonel.

Cam felt like he'd been lied to when he arrived at Stargate Command and was informed that he wouldn't be joining his heroes on SG-1, that his heroes had moved on to bigger and better things and he was supposed to choose a new SG-1 to lead himself. Teal'c was on Dakara. Sam was at Area 51. And Daniel was getting ready to head to Atlantis on the next supply run with the _Daedalus_.

When Daniel ran into him on base, he smiled, was polite, but acted like he hadn't spent hours at Cam's bedside, reading to him. At first Cam was affronted, but he supposed, in Daniel's defense, Daniel didn't know him very well, because they hadn't really interacted. Cam knew Daniel well, knew the way his wrist curved when he drank coffee, knew the cadences of his voice from when it was fast and high-pitched and excited to when it was slow and jagged and broken. Daniel's seeming indifference to him didn't dampen Cam's stupid crush any. He'd had a lot of time to lay in that hospital bed feeling miserable and sorry for himself and pinning his next moment of comfort, relief, happiness on Daniel's next visit.

If Daniel was leaving for Atlantis, that was Cam's dream shattered, his hopes of fighting alongside those who'd fought for him for years without him knowing dashed. But Daniel was going so far away that Cam's crush would have no choice but to die. Cam didn't need Daniel around anyhow.

And then Daniel offered Cam his key, said Cam could take over the lease of his apartment. He'd packed away pretty much everything but the bare necessities. Cam could have his bed (his sheets, his pillows), his kitchenware, his television, anything he wanted. Daniel didn't tend to have the latest in movies but he could have Daniel's Blockbuster Card too so long as he didn't run up any late fees. Cam wasn't sure he could handle living in Daniel's living space, but he hadn't had a chance to look at apartments yet, and if Daniel wasn't going to be using it, why not? Chances were Daniel's neighbors wouldn't even notice the switch anyway, what with Cam keeping the same weird hours because he had the same weird off-world schedule.

And _then_ Vala Mal Doran happened, and Cam went from wondering how he would cope with living in the object of his crush's apartment to wondering how he would cope with living _with_ said object of his crush. For a while his crush was subsumed in the overwhelming joy – and terror – of SG-1 being back together, and Cam's reveling in his dream coming true made it easy to forget that he was living with Daniel.

For a while. For the first four months they lived together, Cam was pretty sure he was being damn careful about not letting Daniel know how he really felt, being nothing but polite, cleaning up after himself, taking his turns to cook dinner when they were on stand-down between off-world missions, being friendly but not too clingy even though he still hadn't made any friends at the SGC besides his team. Also, he listened to the stories the others told, that hadn't been told in SG-1's AARs, like about Daniel's wife Shau'ri, and Sarah Gardner his ex-girlfriend who'd also been taken by a Goa'uld, and how Daniel never dated anybody but alien women seemed to love him, possibly more than they'd loved O'Neill (though for Daniel the affection of alien women had proved fatal at least once). Message received loud and clear: Daniel Jackson was straight, Cam's crush was hopeless, and he had to move on.

He should have moved on. Daniel wasn't the neatest roommate, compared to a military man. He tended to leave his books everywhere, his coffee mugs everywhere else, and forgot to do things like the dishes when it was his turn. He wasn't a complacent scientist, either. He'd learned to more or less accept it when Sam or Cam made a military decision, but when he felt like a decision rested more in his area of expertise, he was like a dog with a bone, and Cam wondered how O'Neill had put up with it so long, Daniel's stubbornness and the way he talked so fast till Cam was bowled over with the words and wondering how the hell he'd given in yet again (and Daniel's blue eyes had nothing to do with it).

But then there was that awkward moment when Cam accidentally walked in on Daniel while he was getting out of the shower, had come barreling into the bathroom after his morning run and found Daniel, naked and glistening, toweling himself off in a leisurely fashion. Cam threw open the door, Daniel straightened up instinctively and turned, and Cam stared, stuttered, paused for a little too long (and this from a man who'd been stationed in some hellholes where privacy and personal space had been nearly nonexistent).

And suddenly it was like Daniel was around Cam all the time, not paying attention to him, but saying the flirtiest things.

"Why yes," he was saying just as Cam came around the corner to his office, "I do enjoy me a Southern gentleman once in a while."

Cam froze in Daniel's doorway.

Daniel looked up at him and grinned, then paused and put his hand over the receiver on the phone. "What do you need?"

"Nothing." Cam's voice cracked. He swallowed hard, tried again, deeper. "Uh, nothing. Just had a question about that last planet we visited." He couldn't remember the name of it. He could always remember the planets' names. "Come see me when you're done."

Daniel nodded, grinned at him again, and resumed his telephone conversation. Cam wanted to make a comment about how he wasn't a southern gentleman; he was from Kansas, which was in the Midwest, but he forced himself to turn and go back to his own office.

Where Daniel had spent a lot of his spare time hanging out with Cam, watching movies with him or playing basketball with him, suddenly he was arm-in-arm with Sam, heads bent close together, giggling like a pair of school girls. And they kept casting glances at Cam when he walked by, which gave him the disturbing sense that they were talking about him.

Sam and Daniel were leaning over some fancy Ancient device in the lab when Cam came to summon them for a briefing.

"No, I'm not interested in a second wife," Daniel was saying as he prodded the device. "I could use a nicmo, though."

Sam blinked at him. "A nicmo?" Realization spread across her features. "Oh. I've always just pronounced the letters: NCMO. Not quite sure what it means."

Daniel snickered. "Non-committal make-out."

Sam giggled and shoved him. "You're so juvenile."

"I'm not the one who named it that!" Daniel threw his hands up in indignation.

"I know."

"They are pretty good, though." Daniel resumed prodding the Ancient device.

"That they are." Sam watched the writing on the device change as Daniel prodded it. "Wait, go back and do that again?"

Cam couldn't believe his ears. Sure, he knew Daniel was a man, and men had needs, but after hearing about all those years he devoted to missing Shau'ri, he wasn't the type of man who would just...just make out with someone for fun, was he?

(Cam was a pretty fun make-out partner, if he did say so himself.)

Cam cleared his throat. "Hey, Wonder Twins, briefing time."

They looked up at him at the same time, fixed him with twin blue gazes, and whoa, maybe he needed a different nickname for them, because that was uncanny. Their expressions were perfectly innocent, like their conversation hadn't been giving Cam dirty thoughts at the most inopportune time. Cam bet that Sam was on the other end of the line when Daniel had made that comment about Southern gentlemen that Cam swore he was going to stop thinking about.

Daniel nodded. "Thanks, Mitchell. Be right there."

Cam wondered what he'd have to do to get Daniel to call him by his first name.

After the briefing, which ended in a heated disagreement between Daniel and Cam, Cam felt terribly guilty. He ought to apologize. He started to follow Sam and Daniel out of the briefing room, but they swept for the stairs without him.

"How are you feeling?" Sam asked.

Daniel sighed, obviously irritated. "A little _it's not me, it's you_."

Sam hummed thoughtfully. "Yeah. Maybe a little _your mom_."

Cam was surprised at her juvenile attitude about the whole thing but not surprised that she was siding so thoroughly with Daniel; they'd been teammates for almost a decade before he showed up. He probably ought to let them cool down before he tried to apologize, then. He headed back to his office and tried not to replay their earlier conversation in his head for the hundredth time. Thinking about Daniel Jackson and non-committal make-out sessions in the same sentence was a poor way to get anything useful done.

Cam didn't see Sam or Daniel for the rest of the day. When five o'clock rolled around, Landry told him to go home, he'd earned it, so he went to the locker room and changed back into his civvies and wondered how he was going to share a living space with Daniel now, now that Daniel was mad at him and apparently knew about his attraction and was torturing him about it.

He ended up drowning his sorrows in a Harry Potter book and dozing on the couch. He came awake when he heard a key turn in the door, but he remained still, eyes closed, breathing even. He could hear muffled voices on the other side of the door, male and female, Daniel and Sam.

Had Cam read them all wrong? Was Daniel hooking up with Sam? The rumors on the base had included all kinds of pairings and configurations of SG-1 hooking up with each other, so Cam couldn't trust any of them, but maybe the tales of Daniel and Sam weren't so far off.

"...And say hey, want an El Doctoro? Because that's not going to sound egotistical to Cam at all."

The door swung open.

So Daniel did know his first name.

"I think you're overthinking things, _Doctor_ Daniel Jackson," Sam said. "Just ask him already. See you tomorrow."

Cam's heart leaped into his throat. Was he reading things right? Was Daniel into him to? Had he been spending more time with Sam so he could talk about how he felt for Cam? Maybe hatch some sort of plan to talk about his feelings? Cam had been raised by strong women, knew that feelings weren't a weakness, but he'd done his time in the military, and unless someone had died - and sometimes not even then - talking about feelings made everyone uncomfortable.

Had Daniel and Sam figured out how Cam felt and made sure to have flirty conversations whenever Cam was nearby so he would know they knew? Was it some kind of warning? _Daniel knows and he's not interested and this is him letting you down easy_.

"Right. Good night, Sam." Daniel closed the front door and set about kicking off his shoes and stowing his keys, wallet, and phone in the bowl by the door where Cam insisted they keep all such things so they wouldn't have to reenact the great Key and Wallet Hunt every morning before work. "Hey, Mitchell – oh. You're asleep. Sorry."

And Daniel actually tried to tip-toe to his bedroom.

Cam sat up slowly, blinked. "No. Not all the way asleep."

Daniel winced. "Did I wake you?"

"No. I was just –"

"Resting your eyes?"

"Something like that." Cam gazed up at Daniel. "Listen, I –"

"I have something to ask you," Daniel began at the same time.

Cam cut himself off. "You go first."

"No, you."

Cam looked into those earnest blue eyes and took a deep breath. "Look, I get it, I have a bit of a country drawl, but I'm not actually Southern. Kansas is in the Midwest. That being said, I do own that sometimes I'm a bit of an old-fashioned gentleman. My mama raised me right."

Daniel opened his mouth to speak, brow furrowed, then closed it.

Good. Cam wasn't sure he could go on if she stopped. "I get that I was a jerk earlier today. I'm sorry. You and Sam were right. It was me, not you who was wrong. I know I've been a little bit distant recently, that I've always been a bit awkward, and I just need to get this off my chest."

"Mitchell –"

"I like you. A lot. And I, uh, wouldn't mind a little El Doctoro with my NCMO, if you catch my drift." Cam knew he was blushing horribly, but there, it was out on the table. There were so many ways this could go wrong and far fewer ways it could go right, but he'd had to say it.

Daniel stared at him for a long moment. Finally he said, "So you have been to the new soda shack on the edge of the parking lot."

That was not one of the responses Cam had anticipated. Everything from a gentle letdown to screaming homophobia to being punched or kicked out of the apartment, but –

"What?" Cam was sure he looked terribly confused.

"The new soda shack that just opened up on the edge of the base parking lot," Daniel said. "Sam and I go there all the time. Their drinks are kind of addicting."

Cam stared at him. "I don't understand."

"They mix sodas and flavor shots, you know? Like Dr. Pepper and peach and vanilla is a Southern Gentleman. They have all kinds of ridiculous names for their drinks – Civil Marriage, Just Friends, Second Wife, Your Mom." Daniel actually snickered a little at the last one.

And suddenly Sam and Daniel's conversations made so much more sense. Cam wanted the floor to open up and swallow him.

"We've been going there a lot to try to find alternates to coffee as our caffeine fix and realized we'd sort of been leaving you out, so I was going to ask if you'd like to come along," Daniel said. "But it sounds like you've already been there."

Cam felt his himself turn from red to white. Oh no. What had he done?

Daniel tilted his head quizzically. "Haven't you?"

"Ah...no."

It was Daniel's turn to look confused.

Cam started to stand up, clutching his book to his chest like a shield. "So, I'm pretty beat. I'll just be heading to bed now –"

Understanding lit in Daniel's eyes, and a smile crossed his face. "Cam Mitchell," he said, "are you offering to make out with me?"

"Well...yes." Cam's mama had raised him to be honest. Didn't mean he wasn't avoiding Daniel's gaze and shuffling his feet, because also _regs_ , dammit.

"I am willing to accept your offer, on one condition."

Cam's heart skipped a beat. He swallowed hard. "What, uh, what condition?"

"That it be something a little more permanent than non-committal." Daniel stepped toward him, and Cam was frozen in place.

"Yeah. I think I can manage that."

"Good." Daniel reached out, plucked the book from Cam's shaking hands, and set it aside. Then he reached up and tugged off his own glasses, laid them on the book, and pulled Cam close.

Their first kiss tasted like peaches and vanilla and a hint of Dr. Pepper.


End file.
